Due to upgrading the house with new doors, windows, and security, work on the cars has slowed down to a crawl. However, the smog pump in the Crown Vic, which had been rattling for last few hundred miles, finally froze solid, destroying a belt in the process. I brought the car into Mooney Shell for what should have been a straight-forward replacement (no more AutoZone smog pumps which don't last too long). However, the rebuilt smog pump that was installed made the same failing noises that the older one did. The car goes back on Monday for another try at getting a good smog pump.

It's been about a year since I put any work into the 1988 Mecury Colony Park station wagon, but because the Pacific Commodore Expo NW is coming up, I decided to perk it up for the long trip to Washington state. Wednesday at the Mooney Shell service station, the mechanics charged up the a.c., this time injecting a dye into the system to see where it is slowly losing its freon. Right now, the a.c. is really cold, because the system is full. Also they started work on the tailgate repairs. Ever since I bought the car, the tailgate would never lock (well, maybe one time), the tailgate window would not slide down, and though the tailgate opened as a door, it never flipped down to being a tailgate. First, the mechanics thought the latch was the cause of the non-locking problem. Also the power locking mechanism (the actuator) did not work. They investigated the tailgate's power window. The former owner had blocked the lowering of the window with aluminum blocks; the mechanics removed those blocks and found that the window motor was bad (or to be more exact, the bearings in the motor were destroyed). The rod(s) that the window slid along were dry (unlubricated) and rough. Also the window itself had 8 holes in the bottom which were supposed to house plastic grommets; only 2 of the grommets were still left. So, by the end of the day, they needed a latch, a window motor, a door actuator, and more grommets. The next day I came back. They had worked on the tailgate for another couple of hours. The hard-to-find latch did not need replacing! Because the window had been blocked from lowering down, they discovered that it had not been fully raised. When raised another 1/8 inch or so, the electric interlock worked and the key was then able to lock the door. One mechanic, Donnie, was still tweaking the power window mechanism when I arrived. Over and over, he powered the window up and down, checking and adjusting the mechanism(s). He had lubricated the rods so that the window smoothly moved, and he had installed replacement grommets he had fabricated (original grommets were no longer available). Finally, he grinded away any excess metal from his repairs before putting back on the interior vinyl door panel. There was no time to put in a new door lock actuator, because I had to leave to visit my mother, but I was very satisfied. The "Magic Doorgate" now worked perfectly through its three functions -- door opening with window in up position, door opening with window in down position, and door flipping down as a tailgate with window in down position.

P.S. Other tweaks planned for the station wagon - replace lower and upper radiator hoses (upper being easy to change, lower being more difficult to change), replace the ignition coil with an Accel ignition coil (easy to do), and change the full-service spare to a mini-spare tire (impossible to remove the full-service spare out of its storage compartment unless two people tackle it).

On the way back from the Pacific Commodore Expo NW, I was about 37 miles from my California destination when I heard a squeal under the hood of the station wagon, smelled burned rubber, saw the AMP indicator come on the dash, and noticed my lights dim down! Oh-oh, alternator trouble and now running on battery! Fortunately, I made it all the way, and the next day I got a rebuilt alternator from O'Reilly's and installed it. I should have known that the rebuilt was no good when I heard whining coming from it. Well, the rebuilt lasted less than 400 miles. I was coming back from Fresno, and I was losing everything... radio, clock. I was on battery power again on the freeway, and I hoped the electronic ignition would not cut out until I got back home. I made it! Yesterday I replaced the rebuilt with another one from O'Reilly, using its lifetime warranty. I'll finish installing the replacement by tomorrow.

They removed the old FoMoCo stereo radio and installed a brand-new Pioneer DEH-X6900BT CD/radio. When they tried hooking into the old Premium Sound speakers, they found out that the speakers had a separate amplifier, making the speakers unusable with the new Pioneer. Solution - bypass the amplifier and put in new speakers. As I had planned, the dull dash speakers were disconnected and the 5 1/4" door speakers (which were in the doors but were not working) were replaced by new Pioneer tri-axial speakers. The rear speakers would have to be installed at a later date.

Today I finally bought new rear speakers and had them installed. The new speakers were Pioneer 6" x 8" speakers, quad-axial but really tri-axial because they have a woofer, mid-range, and two tweeters. Strangely, unlike the FoMoCo front door speakers, the FoMoCo rear speakers did not have an amplifier hanging off each unit, i.e, they were ordinary paper speakers with a rubberized surround and a whizzer cone. The paper was brittle, and one of the whizzer cones was torn... yeah, they needed to be replaced. Also unlike the auto stereo installation of last year, this time the speaker installation was pretty straight-forward. Undo the rear speaker grilles, detach the old speakers off the grilles, attach the new speakers to the grilles, adapt the old speaker wires to the new speakers, and replace the grill/speaker combination back into the rear. Final result -- much clearer sound now that the rear speakers were installed!

P.S. But as in my other cars, more has to be eventually done to the Colony Park. Cruise control has failed (it failed just as I was coming back from the Pacific NW a few months ago). and defrost/heat is not coming from the upper/lower registers. Also the faded "wood" on the tailgate area is bugging me. I asked about it at a local body shop, but they had no experience in restoring it and thus didn't want to work on it. However, I found a site selling the vinyl wood that nearly duplicates the factory look. http://woodgrain4wagons.com/

P.P.S. I asked the auto stereo shop about whether they could stop (sound-deaden) the vibrating of the front inner door panels (which is what happens when the car stereo is a bit too loud). They said they could apply Dynamat to stop those resonances. T will have to think about that for the future!